Agricultural combines are configured to travel through an agricultural field, cutting the crop plants loose from the field, and gathering them. They also strip the crop portion (e.g. the grain) from the rest of the crop plant and discard the unwanted portion (also known as “material other than grain” or “MOG”).
Corn is harvested using an agricultural combine with a corn harvesting head or “corn head” attached on the front end thereof. The corn cobs are separated from the plant stalk itself, and are carried backwards into a threshing separating and cleaning system within the agricultural combine. In the combine the kernels of corn are separated from the corn cobs and are stored in a grain tank located in an upper portion of the agricultural combine.
The cobs of corn and corn husks are then transmitted to a chopper disposed at the lower rear portion of the agricultural combine where they are chopped into small pieces, approximately 2 to 6 cm long, and are ejected from outlet of the chopper at the rear of the combine and are spread over the ground.
In recent years, scientists have developed uses for the entire corn plant for such things as firing boilers or creating ethanol or making plastics. It is desirable therefore to collect not only the grain, but the corn cobs and the plant stalks.
In order to use this material, it must be collected. And in order to handle it easily, both the corn cobs and the cornstalks must be chopped into small pieces on the order of 3-9 cm long.
Collecting this additional stalk material, however, places a significant additional load on the chopper of a typical agricultural combine. The choppers were made to chop corn cobs, not to shop long stringy plant stalks as well. In newer arrangements, choppers for agricultural combines have been devised at shopping multiple directions laterally, in a direction parallel to the longitudinal axis of the chopper rotor, and radially, in a direction perpendicular to the axis of the chopper rotor.
One problem has surfaced with this new arrangement, however. By harvesting corn stalks as well as corn cobs, large solid matter, such as rocks, branches, and other material gets gathered together with the corn plant as it is processed in the agricultural combine.
When this material is transmitted through the chopper, it jams into the cutting spaces between the stationary and the moving chopper knives and damages the chopper.
The technical problem, therefore, is providing an overload mechanism for the chopper of an agricultural combine that will permit the stationary and the moving blades to move out of engagement with each other when they experience a high load, such as that provided by a rock, branch, or other unchoppable matter
It is an object of this invention to provide such a combine chopper and agricultural combine.